Worst Vacation Ever? Man Trapped on Island for Two Weeks by Crocodile

Every time he tried to paddle off, the crocodile came really close to his boat and he had to turn back.

Ryan Blair doesn’t want to hear about your horrible delayed flight or how the airline lost your bag. Compared to his horrible vacation, yours was a cakewalk, because you weren’t trapped on an island for two weeks by a crocodile determined to eat you.

The saga began when Blair was dropped off in a kayak to explore the northern coast of Western Australia. He had food and water and stopped on Governor Island for a bit. He found himself unable to leave, when a crocodile began stalking him. Every time Blair tried to leave, the crocodile would appear again, tracking him. For fear of being eaten, he turned back to the island. ”I was scared for my life – I was hard core praying for God to save me,” Blair told 9News.

Thankfully for Blair, Don MacLeod, the crocodile whisperer of the weekend, saw his light on the island. MacLeod told ABC that Blair’s fears weren’t unjustified. “That crocodile I’ve seen him several times actually going by quite fast,” he said. “Very, very large crocodile, one of the biggest that I know of around here.” When MacLeod finally found Blair, “He was desperate for water.” So the crocodile whisperer did the exact right thing for a man who’d spent two days trying to outwit a giant hungry reptile: “We gave him a cold beer, which was probably the wrong thing, and then he went to sleep about three-quarters of the way home.”

Less than 24 hours later crocodile whisperer MacLeod went on to help another man whose boat had been attacked by a crocodile. But MacLeod says it’s not him, it’s the crocs. And the tourists. Both of whom are getting braver and more common. “Nowadays, there’s more and more people coming and they’re losing their fear, and that’s where you have these incidents unfortunately,” he told ABC.

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About Rose Eveleth

Rose Eveleth is a writer for Smart News and a producer/designer/ science writer/ animator based in Brooklyn. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Scientific American, Story Collider, TED-Ed and OnEarth.

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